The funk of winter set in with a vengeance around the first week of January. We sank into ever-worsening air quality and cold temperatures – no storms. Our snow turned to ice, then to dirty ice. Although, here at our place we remained above the fog, the air became so nasty we couldn’t see past the street in front of our house. You’d think that these inversions would keep people from wanting to move here. For most of the month of January I didn’t want to live here.
And the animals got in a funk also. All of us just moped around waiting for something to change. I had been letting the cows out on the hard, frozen pastures and they did quite a bit of running and playing. Then about the middle of January I put them in one of our upper pastures bordering where 5 of our heifer calves are kept. Even though the cows and heifers can see each other all the time, the cows still behaved as though their daughters had just returned from a year-long tour of duty in Iraq. The ten of them (mothers and daughters) ran up and down the common fenceline, stopping to touch noses and lick each others’ ears. Even elderly Elsa was acting reasonably young that day. After a half hour or so of this ecstasy, they all calmed down and went about their cud-chewing.
Jennifer and I go through the same routine every year (stopping to touch noses and lick each others’ ears? – No…well sometimes, but keep reading). Our sales are always down after the Holidays. We always start dreaming of what life would be like if we had just kept working normal jobs. A trip to Mexico? A weekend in St. George? How about just cranking up the heat and staying indoors for the weekend? No, we spend our days trying to chip frozen cow manure from behind the freestalls, hauling milk up icy steps to the cheese parlor, breaking ice on water troughs, feeding the baby calves three-times a day to help them survive the cold.
Okay, the point is, we both turn into a couple of miserable whiners in January. Thank God for other people. A young, happy couple from Malibu, California – here on a skiing weekend – called and asked if they could meet us and have a tour of our place. They are cheese lovers and had found us through our website. We had a nice visit and shared plenty of cheese (Rockhill) and bread (Crumb Brother’s) and stories of places that weren’t quite so miserable (Malibu).
Then we had an Italian couple (from Durham, NC – kind of funny accents) come visit. They are cheesemakers also. She had spent a year making cheese in the north of Italy…Jennifer was besides herself with wonderlust. Again, after a nice tour we settled down to cheese, bread and this time a bottle of wine. Well, needless to say, nothing much got done the rest of that afternoon.
And we had some great fortune in signing up some new wholesale customers. Michael Scott of Market of Choice – a group of seven markets in the Portland/Eugene area, made our day with a nice order and some very kind words about our cheese. Jodie Rogers of Deer Valley’s Snow Park Lodge came through with a good first order and some more very generous words of encouragement.
We also picked up an account in Seattle – The Cheese Cellar’s Theresa Simpson added to our slowly recovering sense of worth. And now, for the next couple of weeks we have chefs, cheesemongers, store managers and a reporter from Canada all coming to visit us. And to add to our good fortune, the weather broke with a couple of nice storms and we are now enjoying warmer-than-normal weather and we can once again see the mountains that surround our valley and remind us of why we love living here.
The cows are still pooping in the barn, Jennifer still doesn’t like packing all the milk over to the cheese parlor and we’re both still dreaming of more than an afternoon away from this place. But we are both whining a bit less and laughing a little more. Thanks all you happy people, and thanks to Mother Nature too! –PS